USViking said:
I previously googled the three authors and noted how Dobbs was the driving force for the thesis “Alchemy as Inspiration Behind Newton’s Science”.
Hers is a surprising thesis, and one opposed by Cohen. Given your comments so far, I think you'd like Cohen's stuff...and I don't mean to give the impression I think Cohen is a dimwit or anything. I think it's an honest disagreement by people who are intellectual peers, but who see things differently.
USViking said:
I am loathe to accept a thesis assigning import to a field of such intellectual and moral bankruptcy as alchemy.
Don't you think, though, that the bolded bit reveals a bias on your part? I mean, we all have our biases. But they prevent us, often, from seeing truth as it is. Again, you'll have to read Dobbs stuff to get the fine details of her argument, but she's pretty careful in her argumentation, and I think she makes a good case.
USViking said:
I do not see how a rigorous case can be made in favor of alchemy absent written affirmation in Newton’s hand and in the hand of the others, so I feel entitled to assume better of the motivation for their scientific endeavor, and leave it at that.
I'm not quite sure what you mean here. Do you just mean, unless we have written affirmation that Boyle instructed Newton on alchemy in Boyle's and Newton's own hand, we shouldn't believe it? I hate to tell you, but we have their correspondence (and Locke's as well) and we know that's what happened. Boyle was an alchemist, and his development of the principles of modern chemistry was inspired by a particular branch of thought in alchemy that attributed attractive forces to corpuscles. It's all laid out fairly explicitly; I think the Royal Society maintains the archives on Boyle's side. The British Museum has the Keynes material (i.e. Newton's stuff).
If instead you just mean it's hard to make a case for alchemy itself...well, consider that, largely thanks to Newton's work, we've come to accept a particular view about the nature of physical stuff. That view has it that what we observe can serve as an explanation for what we observe. Rather interestingly, this was a view that Newton was loathe to accept, and one it's not clear that he himself ever held. Nineteenth century distortion of his view is probably more responsible for our own inheritance of this idea. Newton was accused (by Leibniz and others) of taking seriously the notion of occult forces, but that notion came to dominate how we think of physics. The forces are just kinda
there, as is physical law. An alchemist would ask why we feel entitled to help ourselves to such a view.
This is not to say that any particular view is correct. But I think if you spend some time and effort really grappling with how we got to where we are, and especially with the ideas that Newton, Leibniz, Boyle, Descartes, Gassendi, etc. were investigating and formulating, it'll probably change your view somewhat. The notion of spirit was banished from our concept of physics, but when you look at why and how it was, it looks pretty arbitrary. Food for thought.
USViking said:
Defense of dogmatically held religious belief is a branch of theology. Theology is the branch of philosophy which is devoted to religious thought.
I wouldn't quite divide things up that way. For one thing, there are plenty of philosophers of religion who would balk at being called theologists, especially as many of them are themselves atheists. But there are also theologists who think it's no part of the business of theology to try to uphold dogmatic belief--lots of mystics have thought so. I tend towards that camp.
USViking said:
Our views are diametrically opposed here: I am sure I understand that theology is nowhere near being the worthiest of all fields of knowledge. (Alchemical knowledge is at the bottom of the list)
I like the way you phrase that, because it seems that understanding is really what is at issue. The philosopher Linda Zagzebski has done some work on the notion of understanding, which she defines as "grasping the non-propositional structures of the world." The "world" in this sense is just everything that exists, and includes basically any subject at all.
It seems to me that for some people, there is no
sensus divinitatis, while for others, there is, and it changes how the two groups respectively grasp the non-propositional structures of the world. This, in turn, changes which inferences seem solid, and which seem suspect. For my part, I think very few people are truly capable of religion in the strict sense of linking-back (
re-ligio) to God, and furthermore, it's unethical to attempt to get someone who cannot to attempt it.